"New Wave" filmmaker Eric Rohmer dies at age 89 (1st Lead)

Jan 11, 2010, 18:23 GMT

Paris - One of the giants of modern French cinema, director Eric Rohmer, has died at age 89, his production company Campagnie Eric Rohmer said Monday.

With other groundbreaking directors, such as Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, Rohmer was one of the founders of French New Wave cinema that in the 1950s and 1960s transformed French and world cinema forever.

In a career spanning nearly 60 years, Rohmer directed more than 50 movies, becoming an international symbol for both what was good and bad about so-called art house films.

In movies such as My Night at Maud's (1969), Claire's Knee (1970) and Pauline at the Beach (1983), Rohmer depicted the behaviour and emotions of human beings, often in the grip of an irrational passion, in a style that conceded little to the demands of entertainment.

Talky, slow-moving, with few of the usual artifices of film-making, Rohmer's movies have legions of passionate fans and detractors.

'You have to see one of (Rohmer's movies), and if you kind of like that one, then you should see his other ones, but you need to see one to see if you like it,' American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino once said in an interview.

On the other hand, the character played by actor Gene Hackman in the 1975 movie Night Moves delivered the following withering criticism: 'I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kind of like watching paint dry.'